The International Commission on Civil Status (ICCS / CIEC in French) is organising a conference on 21 September 2022 entitled: ICCS plurilingual forms Present and future of international cooperation in civil status matters.

This event is being held on the occasion of the entry into force of the Convention (n°34) relative à la délivrance d’extraits et de certificats plurilingues et codés d’actes de l’état civil for the following States: Belgium, Germany and Switzerland (as of 1 July 2022).

Speeches and discussions will be in French or English with simultaneous interpretation.

The venue of the conference is Château de Pourtalès, 161, rue Mélanie, 67000 STRASBOURG – France.

Registration is free of charge but mandatory. Interested persons should send a message to:

ciec-sg@ciec1.org

Below is the agenda (see also here Conference program):

8.30 am : Welcome speech

Jeannine Dennewald, President of the ICCS

8.40 am : Opening speech

Hans van Loon, former Secretary General of the Hague Conference on Private International Law

Morning session : 9.00 – 12.15 am : Improving plurilingual forms

Chair : Paul Lagarde, Emeritus professor, University Paris I, former secretary general of the ICCS

9.00 – 10.30 am : workshop n°1 : Plurilingual forms and sex of persons: same-sex couples, neutral sex and third sex

Speaker : Patrick Wautelet, Professor, University of Liège

Discussion : Dr Bojana Zadravec, President of the Slovenian Association of Administrative Staff, EVS (European Association of Registars)

10.30 – 10.45 am : break

10.45 am – 12.15 pm : workshop n°2 : Plurilingual forms and filiation: the relevance of adapting to diversity

Speaker : Olivier Guillod, Professor, University of Neuchâtel

Discussion : Hague Conference representative

12.15 – 12.30 pm : The ICCS: dynamic transition to the future

Nicolas Nord, Secretary General of the ICCS

Afternoon session : 2.00 – 6.00 pm : Optimizing the circulation of plurilingual forms

Chair : Anatol Dutta, Professor, University of Munich

2.00 – 2.30 pm : workshop n°3 : Plurilingual forms and European rights: from the public documents regulation to the recognition of situations

Speaker : Camille Reitzer, Deputy Secretary General of the ICCS

Discussion : Marie Vautravers, European Commission

3.30 – 4.00 pm : break

4.00 – 5.30 pm : workshop n°4 : Plurilingual forms, digitization and data protection: the need for a specific regime

Speaker : Guillermo Palao Moreno, Professor, University of Valencia

Discussion : ANUSCA representative – Alexander Schuster, University of Graz

5.30 – 6.00 pm : General conclusion

Andreas Bucher, Emeritus Professor, University of Geneva

 

A. Introduction

During the Summer of 2019, I attended one of the two flagship courses organised by the Hague Academy of International Law – the annual Summer Courses on Private International Law.

I quite vividly recall that, during the opening lectures, one of the Professors welcomed the participants at the premises of the Academy, a few steps from the Peace Palace itself, and made an observation that, at that time, seemed as captivating as remote.

As my precise recollection of his words may be far less accurate than the memory of the impression they made on me, I paraphrase: when it comes to education in general, in years to come – he noted – it will be a privilege to be able to benefit from a physical presence of a teacher or professor, being there, in front of you, within the reach of your hand and of your questions.

At that time, just a few months prior to the beginning of the worldwide spread pandemics, even the Professor himself most likely did not realize the extent to which his words would soon prove prophetic.

That was, however, not the sole lecture that I recall vividly.

Among others, Professor Matthias Weller (University of Bonn, one of two general editors of CoL.net) presented his course titled ‘Mutual Trust’: A Suitable Foundation for Private International Law in Regional Integration Communities and Beyond?

Read more

The deceased, living in Germany, leaving as her sole heir her son, who also lives in Germany, owned immovable property in Germany and Lithuania. Her son obtained a European Certificate of Succession from the German authorities, naming him as the sole heir of the deceased’s entire estate. He presented the certificate to the Lithuanian authorities and applied for the immovable property to be recorded in the Real Property Register. They refused to do so on the grounds that the certificate was incomplete, as the European Certificate of Succession submitted did not contain the information required under the Lithuanian Law on the Real Property Register to identify the immovable property by documents to be submitted, in that it did not list the property inherited by the applicant. The heir sought legal redress against this rejection with the Lithuanian courts. Against this background the referring court asked:

Must point (l) of Article 1(2) and Article 69(5) [of Regulation No 650/2012] be interpreted as not precluding legal rules of the Member State in which the immovable property is situated under which the rights of ownership can be recorded in the Real Property Register on the basis of a European Certificate of Succession only in the case where all of the details necessary for registration are set out in that European Certificate of Succession?

AG Szpunar first of all referred to the overall objective of the ESR as spelled out in recital 7 to facilitate the proper functioning of the internal market by removing the obstacles to the free movement of persons who want to assert their rights arising from a cross-border succession (para. 39). In doing so, the Regulation does not harmonise substantive law but has opted for harmonising private international law, choice of law in particular (para. 40) but also provides for the European Certificate of Inheritance, subject to an autonomous legal regime, established by the provisions of Chapter VI (Art. 62 et seq.) of the Regulation.

Article 68 lists the information required in a European Certificate of Succession “to the extent required for the purpose for which it is issued” and this includes “the share for each heir and, if applicable, the list of rights and/or assets for any given heir” (italic emphasis added).

Under a succession law like the German that does not provide for succession other than universal succession it is clear that the estate as a whole, rather than particular assets, is transferred as a totality. AG Szpunar concludes: “That being so, it is not necessary to include an inventory of the estate in the European Certificate of Succession, inasmuch as the situation referred to in point (l) of Article 68 of Regulation No 650/2012 by the phrase ‘if applicable’, the need for a list of assets for any given heir, does not arise” (para. 55). Thus, the phrase “if applicable” is not to be understood solely as a reflection of the wishes of the person applying for a European Certificate of Succession (para. 57). Even though the applicant is required to inform the authority issuing the certificate of its purpose, it is for that authority to decide, based on that information, whether or not an asset should be specified. The Commission Implementing Regulation No 1329/2014 (point 9 of Annex IV to Form V) does not have a bearing on this decision as it can only implement but not modify the Regulation (para. 73).

However, where the situation does not depend upon a national right of succession governed by the principle of universal succession and where the purpose of the certificate can only be achieved by indicating the share of the inheritance for the person in question, “it is most likely that the asset in question should be specified” (para 62). And even if there is no need to list assets (such as under German law), “it should be noted in that regard that, if a European Certificate of Succession is to produce its full effects, a degree of cooperation and mutual trust between the national authorities is required. That may imply that the issuing authority is required, in a spirit of sincere cooperation with the authorities of other Member States, to take account of the requirements of the law governing the register of another Member State, especially if that authority holds relevant information and elements” (para. 65).

Of course, Point (l) of Article 1(2) of the ESR states that “any recording in a register of rights in immovable or movable property, including the legal requirements for such recording, and the effects of recording or failing to record such rights in a register” is excluded from the scope of the regulation. By its judgment in Kubicka, AG Spzunar explained, “the Court found that points (k) and (l) of Article 1(2) and Article 31 of that regulation must be interpreted as precluding refusal, by an authority of a Member State, to recognise the material effects of a legacy ‘by vindication’, provided for by the law governing succession chosen by the testator in accordance with Article 22(1) of that regulation, where that refusal is based on the ground that the legacy concerns the right of ownership of immovable property located in that Member State, whose law does not provide for legacies with direct material effect when succession takes place. As a consequence of that judgment in Kubicka, the German law disputed in the main proceedings was not applied to the transfer of ownership. However, it did not concern real property registration rules. The national property law of a Member State may therefore impose additional procedural requirements, but only inasmuch as any such additional requirements do not concern the status attested by the European Certificate of Succession.” (paras. 77 et seq).

As Advocate General Bot noted in his Opinion in Kubicka, in practice, other documents or information may be required in addition to the European Certificate of Succession where, for example, the information in the certificate is not specific enough to identify the asset the ownership of which must be registered as having been transferred. In the present case, however, AG Szpunar rightly observed, “the Lithuanian authorities have all the information needed for the purpose of making an entry in the Real Property Register: they are able to identify the person to whom the asset in question belongs or belonged and to ascertain, from the European Certificate of Succession, the status of heir of the applicant in the main proceedings”. Thus “the effet utile of the European Certificate of Succession would be undermined if Lithuanian property law were able to impose additional requirements on the applicant” (para. 81).

In other words, even though the contents of a European Certificate of Succession, due to the underlying lex successsionis, may not exactly represent what is required for documentation by the lex registrii of the requested Member State, the overarching principle of the EU’s efforts for integration, namely mutual trust, and, more concretely, the effet utile of the ESR create the obligation of the requested Member State to substitute required documents under its lex registrii as much as functionally possible – a methodical tool that may perhaps be abstractly framed as “extended substitution” and may well develop to a powerful concept for the European Succession Certificate.

Be that as it may, limited to the constellation in question, AG Szpunar concluded:

“Point (l) of Article 1(2), point (l) of Article 68 and Article 69(5) of Regulation (EU) No 650/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 4 July 2012 on jurisdiction, applicable law, recognition and enforcement of decisions and acceptance and enforcement of authentic instruments in matters of succession and on the creation of a European Certificate of Succession preclude the application of provisions of national law pursuant to which an immovable property acquired by a sole heir pursuant to a right of succession governed by the principle of universal succession can only be recorded in the Real Property Register of the Member State in whose territory that asset is located on the basis of a European Certificate of Succession if all the data required under the national law of that Member State to identify the immovable property are included in the certificate.”

The full text of the Opinion is here.

The Final Conference of the EFFORTS Project

• Date: Friday, 30 September 2022
• Venue: Università degli Studi di Milano – Sala Napoleonica, Via Sant’Antonio, 12 (Milan, Italy) (remote participation is also available)

The Conference is the final event of the EFFORTS (Towards more EFfective enFORcemenT of claimS in civil and commercial matters within the EU) Project, funded by the European Union and conducted by the University of Milan (coord.), the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for Procedural Law, the University of Heidelberg, the Free University of Brussels, the University of Zagreb, and the University of Vilnius.

The Conference will provide an international forum where academics, policymakers, and practitioners discuss the Project’s key findings and exchange their views on the national implementation of – and the path forward for – the EFFORTS Regulations (i.e., the Brussels I-bis Regulation and the Regulations on the European Enforcement Order, the European Small Claims Procedure, the European Payment Order, and the European Account Preservation Order).

The Conference will tackle, in particular:

• Current challenges in the EU rules on cross-border enforcement of claims
• The interaction between the EFFORTS Regulations and national enforcement procedures
• Future perspectives for the re-drafting of EU rules on cross-border enforcement of claims

The working language is English; simultaneous translation in Italian will be available.

Registration is compulsory. More information is available here.

 

In their most recent article on A Hague Convention on Parallel Proceedings, 63 HARVARD INTERNATIONAL LAW JOURNAL ONLINE 1 (2022), Ron Brand and Paul Herrup argued that the Hague Conference on Private International Law should not undertake a project to require or prohibit exercise of original jurisdiction in national courts. Rather, the goal of current efforts should be to improve the concentration of parallel litigation in a “better forum,” in order to achieve efficient and complete resolution of disputes in transnational litigation. The Hague Conference is now taking this path. As the Experts Group and Working Group have moved forward on the Parallel Proceedings Convention project, however, there has been difficulty in leaving behind existing approaches that have not led to acceptable solutions. In particular, the work has failed to look far beyond the traditional civil law lis alibi pendens and common law forum non conveniens approaches to parallel litigation, or a focus on questions of jurisdiction.

In their new article, available here, the authors argue that the time is ripe for fresh thinking that reflects Twenty-first century realities in finding a workable approach to parallel litigation. They build on the previous article by discussing a possible architecture and some of the critical features of a parallel proceedings convention geared to moving litigation to the better forum.